1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to an adjusting device provided at an offset or letterpress machine for zonally adjusting the ink gap with respect to the ink-fountain roller. Such a device can generally be used to thereby regulate the quantity of ink picked up by the ink-fountain roller. A printing press will typically have a plurality of such adjusting devices disposed side by side, adjacent one another, in an axial direction of the ink-fountain roller, and each of the adjusting devices can be manually adjustable via adjusting screws.
2. Background Information
One such type of adjusting device, as described above, is disclosed in Federal Republic of Germany Patent No. DE 27 11 553 A1. The adjusting device disclosed therein uses adjusting screws for adjusting the individual devices. The adjusting screws are advantageously designed so as to feature a fine thread with a fine pitch to thereby allow for a very fine adjustment of the ink gap. However, with such a device, it has become apparent that, when, e.g., effecting an adjustment from a zero position to a maximal-inking position, the pressman has to turn the adjusting screw a fairly large number of turns because of the fine pitch of the threads. For this reason, the pressman would have to spend a relatively long time, e.g., turning each of the adjusting screws of an ink fountain, which could number more than thirty, in order to adjust the individual adjusting means for every zone of the ink profile of one inking unit. If the pressman is in charge of a machine having a plurality of inking units, adjusting the machine to a new print product can take a relatively long time, merely due to the ink-zone adjustments.